


Last Place, First Kiss

by Dormammu



Category: Avengers Academy (Video Game), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Avac, Avengers Academy - Freeform, First Kiss, Fluff, Halloween, Halloween Costumes, M/M, Werewolves
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-27
Updated: 2016-10-27
Packaged: 2018-08-27 10:23:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,486
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8397907
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dormammu/pseuds/Dormammu
Summary: Tony "wins" last place at the Halloween costume contest. With his spirits crushed, he decides to "celebrate" alone with a plateful of cheese and a serving of solitary manful brooding in the dark. One werewolf will have none of the latter and some of the former.





	

_Last place... Last place._  As Tony made a hasty and yet, in his opinion, dignified retreat from Club A, those two words took over his brain. He was devastated, ready to keel over from the unfairness of it all. His masterpiece of a costume was obviously way ahead of its time. Not that he was going to show how much this hurt to anyone. Ok, maybe later he'd go to Rhodey with two cups of hot chocolate and let him offer a few consoling words. Right in that moment, however, his mission was to take a large plate of cheese and abscond with it somewhere he could be alone with his feelings. And the stolen cheese.

The plate secured inside his costume, slowly removing himself out of eyesight of anyone with a look of pity for his crushing defeat, he thought about going back to Stark Tower and adding some of his own cheese to the plateful of devastation, but he remembered just in time that the after party was going to take place there. There was also a chance that some stragglers from his Halloween pre-party were still there. With that gorgeous cheese sculpture of himself in his Cardboard Iron Man costume...

 _Last place..._ That feeling of his heart breaking into pieces was back in full force. The tower was out.

He settled on finding a spot in the darkness behind the Timeless Archives, no one would go there tonight, everyone was at the party, even the nerdiest of nerds. Well, he thought as he took off his cardboard helmet, here's to partying on your own with only some cheese as your only company. With thoughts of cheese and darkness and unappreciative nerds and fellow students he managed to lower himself to the ground without ripping the costume. He still believed in it. In the back of his mind he was already designing Cardboard Iron Man 2.0 for the next Halloween, he'd show them. But that was waay in the back of his genius brain. The front of it felt sad and misunderstood and eager to numb the pain of "winning" the last place with cheese and manful brooding.

So that's what he did. He ate the cheese, appreciated the taste, even decided to ask Jan who her caterer was once the soreness of defeat subsided, when he heard an approaching noise. A noise that sounded suspiciously like sniffing. Tony went still - not that he had much freedom of movement anyway in his costume - and listened. Soft padding, too soft to be mistaken for footsteps, and an occasional "sniff sniff" sound made it clear. It was Steve. His wolf form and its dog nose had found Tony.

Few seconds later he was proven right. Steve... well, the wolf wearing Steve's ripped uniform trotted up to Tony on all fours, his tail wagging. Tony scratched him lightly behind the ear, trying to placate the wolf enough so he wouldn't try to lick his face. Tony was going to miss the wolf Steve. He was much nicer to him than the human Steve, following him around and wanting to play catch and take selfies all the time. He briefly wondered when he'd change back, probably soon now that Halloween was over.

"You smelled the cheese, didn't you?" he asked the wolf. At the word "cheese" Steve-wolf perked up. "Ok then, you can have some, but then get lost, alright? I am dealing with something here." Steve wolf looked at him pleadingly. Of course, Tony thought, you only want my food. But he quickly realized that blaming an animal, or an animal side of a human for its own nature is way too self-pitying even for his circumstances.

"Here," he offered a fistful of cheese, knowing well he'd have to remember not to use that hand before washing it from doggy saliva. Steve wolf did what Tony expected, swiped the entire tongue over his hand before wolfing the cheese down. Gross. "You need to learn how to use a fork, Cap," Tony reprimanded him, suppressing a laugh at the thought of a werewolf using utensils. He went further in his imagination, Wolf Cap at a tea party, a fancy one with lace doilies and bonnets, maybe he could wear a flowery dress! Tony lost it at that thought and started laughing like a madman. The wolf stopped chewing and looked at him, his tail wagging once more.

"No Cap," Tony said, "we're not going to play Catch the Frisbee, so you can stop it with the wagging and scram."

The wolf didn't do as he was told, choosing to look dumbly at Tony instead, like he didn't understand what Tony was talking about. But Tony knew that trick just like he knew for a fact that the wolf was perfectly capable of leaving when not wanted. Then it occurred to him, it was possible that the wolf wouldn't go away until the cheese plate was empty. Tony thought what the hell and pushed the plate toward the wolf. Brooding could be done without cheese after all and the guy did make him laugh.

The wolf, however, didn't pounce on the plate like Tony expected. He ignored it. A plateful of cheese! Even in wolf form Steve was a stronger man than he was, Tony thought wistfully. The wolf then did something even more surprising, instead of leaving for better platefuls, maybe with some actual doggy food, he went around Tony's cardboard-covered legs and settled on Tony's other side, opposite of the plate. Tony was baffled.

"Am I usurping your territory or something, Cap?" He didn't even think to look or smell for usual signs. Gross. The wolf was looking at him, one could say imploringly, like he wanted something, a permission. Tony tried with another cheese cube. The wolf looked away, but he looked briefly at Tony's cardboard covered thigh. And it dawned on Tony, he wants to put his head there. "Ok, come here you," Tony said, sighing, patting his thigh lightly in invitation. Cap Wolf's eyes lit up and in a split second Tony had a lapful of wolf fur.

Tony expected him to leave after he had his fill of light scratching behind the ear, or when Tony started complaining about the Academy's outdated ideas about Halloween costumes, or when he started lamenting the lack of glitter in the final look of his costume and points for irony that would surely have gotten him. By then Steve wolf was quiet and in awe of Tony's eloquence, only a sporadic sound of surprise at monumental injustice of the entire American idea of contest. Those sounds of surprise were mostly Zz's or sometimes a soft whine, but Tony didn't judge the brute.

Somewhere around his third lamentation about the glitter he realized he was pretty tired and before he could think about it and decide that falling asleep in the open like some bum was a bad idea, the darkness swallowed him.

 

He woke up at dawn, with a feeling of incredible weight crushing his leg and sounds of something akin to clattering teeth way too close for comfort.

The sight which greeted him when he opened his eyes was almost enough to make him scream undignifiedly: Steve Rogers in a torn uniform, shivering in his sleep, almost entirely wrapped around Tony's cardboard-clad leg. He didn't scream. Remembering what happened last night - how Steve-wolf came to him and kept him company as he ranted about this and that - made him forget about screaming for the moment and instead gently nudge the sleeping Cap awake.

"Rogers," he croaked. Sleeping outside - very bad for voice, something to remember. "Wake up. We need to go before someone sees you like that."

"What..." whined Steve Rogers, in human flesh once more. "Oh jeez!" he stopped hugging Tony's leg and jumped back a little, the situation making itself clear in that ordered little brain.

"We need to go! Me back to tower, you back to dorm."

Steve didn't seem to hear him, he instead sat up and said, hugging himself, "He's gone, my wolf is gone." He seemed almost sad about it. To be honest, Tony himself was sad about it.

"Yeah, you must have changed back over the night." A terrible thought came to Tony then. Did he, did he try something? Like kissing wolf Cap? That would be exactly something Loki would do with this lycanthropy business, devise a prank where Tony had to kiss a werewolf to make him turn back. He was going to test his repulsors on that little...

"I felt him starting to go away last night," Steve said. "Or did I, as a wolf, feel my human self coming back...?" he paused, as if in deep thought. "I... I think a part of me wanted to stay a werewolf."

Tony looked into Steve's blue eyes, they seemed sad and a little bit lost. Gorgeous as always though. He wished he could hug him, no, he wished Steve, human Steve would want a hug from him and then that he could hug him.

"It was easier," Steve continued in a monotone voice, looking at his knees, "it felt so carefree to just run around, follow people, howl at the moon..." He sighed attractively.

"Look," Tony said, trying to sound supportive, "he was a great wolf, for some reason he liked even me, or my cheese. But being human is better. You can solve equations, make things, use utensils..." he ran out of things then. Oh, he remembered a good one: "You can talk!"

"Yeah. Talk." Steve went silent. Awkwardissimo.

They sat in silence for a few minutes. Who knew manly brooding could be this uncomfortable.

"You can help me get up? This costume is restrictive to my movement. And to my self-confidence. It got me the last place at the costume contest last night." He added that last part to try and cheer up Cap a little but Cap looked up at him sharply when he said "contest" and then back down as if feeling guilty about this momentary display of anger. Or whatever that face was.

Cap got up and offered his hand to Tony. "I remember that part," he said, almost inaudibly as he helped Tony up. "The wolf, he got angry, especially when he saw you leaving."

Tony, back on his own, slightly numb feet, took a step back in surprise. He was really going to miss that wolf, it might have been a real thing between them. He had not really been a human, but they could've decided on details as they went along.

Steve smiled shyly at him, "He made me run around the campus, or I made him..."

Tony raised an eyebrow, trying to convey his confusion.

"I think we were both angry. His idea was to go through other contestants's costumes, with his teeth." Steve stopped talking abruptly, looked somewhere behind Tony, as if he was avoiding his eyes. " _I_ made him run and then we smelled, or he smelled, you and that cheese you took. I wanted to go back but he made me, or us, go to you. All that running made me hungry so he took over. Then, when you fed us the cheese, I could take more control..." Steve drifted off, seemingly losing the thread of his story.

"What are you trying to say?" Tony asked, kind of putting two and two together by himself anyway.

"I didn't want to leave you, he didn't want to either. I think he wanted to spend last moments by your side. But it was my choice and I didn't want to go either."

"Ok... Why?" Tony was hoping with all his heart the reason wasn't pity. He mentally prepared himself for that worst outcome anyway.

Steve was silent for a moment. Then, making himself stand more upright and doing that thing where he puts his thumbs on his belt-buckle, he said: "My wolf liked you, you were one of his favorite people... favorite living beings here. But -" and Steve sighed here like Tony did whenever some of his cheese went moldy, in a non-edible way. "- he had gotten that from me." He looked at Tony from under his lashes as if he just revealed something terrible and he was ready for something really bad to happen.

Tony took a moment, thinking about what Steve just said.

"Oh my god! Are you saying you like me?!" In his defense, it was too early in the morning, too impossible, and Steve's wording was way too cryptic to allow for tact on Tony's part.

Steve deflated and looked down. "Yeah." 

"That's..." Tony was lost for words. Luckily, not for acts. He immediately took off the cardboard gauntlets and then started working on more problematic leg area. More problematic because he had used up three rolls of duct tape so that he'd be able to walk without sounds of rippage following his every step.

"A little help, Rogers?" he said, trying to dislodge some of the duct tape mass securing the cardboard to his calf, nearly dislodging his knee instead.

Steve ambled to his side, and with supersoldier strength and ease ripped the cardboard covers at the seams, releasing Tony's legs. Freedom felt great. The torso covering could stay for the moment.

"Now," Tony said, trying for self-assured and poised, but behind the cardboard, his heart was pounding like crazy. "Ask me if I like you."

Steve sighed once more, shook his head disbelievingly and put his hands on his hips. "Do you? Like me?" he said, looking not quite at Tony.

"How's this for liking?" and Tony took two steps forward - the remaining cardboard making it feel far less dignified and sexy than he intended - took Steve's both hands into his own, and did what he wanted to do for like, a year: fused their lips together in a sexy slide of love. The phrase that, in near future, would make Steve groan and blush whenever Tony recounted the story of their first kiss to their friends. Followed by even more flushing and fidgeting when Tony started to describe what happened next and claiming that the reason for it happening was the fact that, as they kissed, Tony could touch a lot of Steve's skin through the ripped uniform and of course, the biology of young men did its thing. At which point, Steve will excuse them both and drag Tony somewhere they can do anything but talk. Moaning and howling with pleasure will be more than allowed, and very likely, Tony will be the one to do those things heartily and with conviction.

Needless to say, Tony's next costume will allow for much more movement and surprise sexy slide of love sessions, and Steve's will be a real costume instead of an all-consuming animal nature. Both made by Jan. Not Loki and sure as hell not Tony.

 

-The End-

 

 


End file.
